Within the last two chapters of “The Other Wes Moore,” I take in every emotion from each Wes and try to relate in any way possible. I am reminded that every decision we make has an outcome, and I come to the knowledge that Wes 2 had to have known that his decisions would soon consume him. Within the pages, I see a story start to unfold about two lives without fathers and each is taken from a different perspective. One Wes is bitter while the other has forgiven the circumstances that took his father away. I take the fact into my life that forgiveness sets you free, and I tell myself I have a choice to live in bitterness or to forgive myself for the things that I have done. Oftentimes, I over complicate things and in this book, Wes 1 shows you
The Other Wes Moore is a book talking about two different men with the same name,Wes Moore. They were both raised up by a single mother and live in the same decaying city, Baltimore, where there are surrounded by drug and alcohol. However, the author Wes Moore’s parents completed their education and have a good job while his grandparents also were well-educated. But the other Wes Moore’s parents didn’t graduate from college, his mother tried to get the scholarship but failed, and his father left high school and don’t have a job either. This two Wes Moores both grew up with their mother. The author Wes’s father died for disease while the other Wes’s father left his family. With this situation, they went to the same direction, being absent from
The Other Wes Moore is a novel that shows the different paths of two different men, one successful and the other not so fortunate. Wes 1 was led by his brave, intellectual mother who impacted his life positively through small decisions. Wes 2 was led by his step- brother who had good intentions but never delivered or cared enough to help Wes through the obstacles of his life. Most of us are fortunate enough to choose who will impact our future but we have no control over our family members and whether they will help or hurt
The main conflict that Wes Moore faced was surviving and overcoming the troubles and influences in the environments he grew up in. Wes went through many experiences, several of them having to do with the worrying activities that went on around him everyday. This quote describes how all of the people living in the same places as Wes, struggled through the same things, what Wes described to be, “…the deadly streets, poverty, and the twin legacy of exclusion and low expectations.” (Moore 170) This means that the economic issues of these cities directly influenced the inhabitants’ life decisions and everyone had the same expectation for life, nothing good. With this expectation in mind, it is easy to see how these issues continued to affect the
“The state of Maryland had one of the highest graduation rates in the nation. Seventy-six percent of high school students who began high school in Maryland completed. In Baltimore County, the number was as high as 85 percent in some years. But in Baltimore City, where Northern High School was located, it was a dismal 38 percent” (Moore 108). In other words, on average, people who live in Baltimore City have a much lower education level than people who live in other cities. With these low high school graduation rates, people who live there have no motivation to succeed. This is how the author describes the education level of his neighborhood in the book The Other Wes Moore. The Other Wes Moore, by Wes Moore, is a book about two boys who have
It’s in these subtle differences that one can identify where it went wrong for the Other Wes Moore. The reason that there was no father figure is drastically different, the author's father died when Moore was
In “The Other Wes Moore”, by Wes Moore, the author takes the readers through his life growing up as well as the life of someone who was a stranger to him during his childhood but turned out to be a huge part of his life later on. His name was also Wes Moore and both he and the author grew up in poverty and did not have the best childhood. Although they grew up similarly, their adulthoods were the polar opposite. The author Wes Moore became the top in his class, a Rhodes scholar, and studied at Oxford University to later become very successful. On the other hand, the other Wes Moore is in prison for the rest of his life for a robbery and murder. How did these two grow up so similarly, yet had completely different adulthoods?
The story of two men growing up in the same neighborhood with similar backgrounds with the same name and eerily similar circumstances that leads and ultimately has each character ending up in very different places in life. Taking completely different paths to their futures is the setting of this story “The Other Wes Moore”. The way a person is shaped and guided in their developmental years does undoubtedly play a huge role in the type of person they will become in life. The author Wes does a good job of allowing you the ability to read this story and the circumstances surrounding the character his mother joy played such an important role in his success, while comparing the roll of Mary the other Wes’s mother. Both boys grew up with strong, hardworking black women in their lives and yet it still allowed for two completely different journeys. I think the lack of fathers and having not so good male role models was also a contributing factor.
Throughout the book, The Other Wes Moore we learned about the lives of two young kids who unexpectedly share the same name but like everyone else have totally different life’s. This book explores the concepts that deal with a person’s path in life and gives us an understanding of which factors are the ones that greatly influence the type of person we will become. I believe that the factors that have a bigger impact on our life paths are; the environment we live in, our family and friends.
In their respective life journey, both Wes Moores often found them facing with some hard choices or decision to make or standing at a crossroads of life change without knowing which way to turn. Therefore, “for all of us who live in the most precarious places in this country, our destinies can be determined by a single stumble down the wrong path or a tentative step down the right one” (Moore xiv). During their early childhood, both Wes Moores struggle at school and had troubles with the law. However, for the author Wes Moore, attending the military school was the biggest turning point in his life. Aware of his mother’s determination, his family’s sacrifice, and encouragement from classmates and instructors as well as the influence of role models, the author Wes Moore finally made up his mind that he wanted to succeed in the military school. At the end, the author Wes Moore fulfilled his dream and did well academically from then on. On the other hand, the other Wes Moore had tumbled on a series of missteps along the road: dropping out of school, getting involved with drug trade, committing violent crimes, and being a father of four when he was so young and immature. Even though there was a time when he tried to reinvent himself: joining the Job Corp, getting a high school diploma, and finding some decent jobs, the reality and his making-quick-money mentality eventually brought him back to the original path with no return. At last, by committing an armed robbery that left a police officer dead, the other Wes Moore irreversibly drove himself to the dead end of life. Obviously, based on their early life experiences, both Wes Moores would have gone the same route to failure. Nevertheless, at some critical points of their lives, the author Wes Moore made some good choices with intervention and guidance of good people while the other Wes Moore lost his footing under undue
They both grow up in a similar environment and was raised by a single mother. Author Wes can see how the other Wes 's life went and saw that there were Decisions and actions that were taken that made them made them into the people they become. American people are always talking about “keeping up with the Jones 's” and “the grass is greener on the other side”, and most people don 't ever know about a person who shared their name and grew up in the same environment. So it makes sense that if a person becomes aware of a person like that, who shared a name and grew up in the same environment, they want to know more about what that person 's life was
Expectations influence who we become. Many factors come into play when we assess the lives of both Wes Moores introduced in the short novel The Other Wes Moore. Some of these factors are the expectations that shaped each man’s life. Moore illustrates his point when he writes, “The expectations that others place on us help us form our expectations of ourselves”(126). The explanation to the quote was it will help people to see the expectation of “thinking outside the box” means that think freely for themselves with better judgment in everyday life for their moral action in their society. Expectations from others have a strong impact on the choices an individual makes, and both Wes Moore’s choices were strongly influenced by the expectations
In The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore, many people were able to grasp ahold of the author Wes’s life and help him get steered into the right direction. I feel that his mother, Joy, had the biggest impact on his life and meant the most for him. “When we moved to New York, she worked multiple jobs, from a freelance writer for magazines and television to a furrier’s assistant- whatever she could do to help cover her growing expenses (47).” Joy was a very hardworking woman. She worked not one but two jobs to cover her expenses, her kids expenses, and to help her parents out. She did this because she wanted what was best for her children. This later comes back to make Wes respect his mother for all that she has provided and sacrificed for him to get all that he did.
“I guess it’s hard sometimes to distinguish between second chances and last chances” (Moore 67). This is a powerfully central theme to the book The Other Wes Moore, written by Wes Moore. For the two men this book is about, it all begins with a wide-open future. The mothers that gave birth to them and the influences they had, along with their own powerful choices, sealed their fate . People don’t ever stop growing or improving and the two Wes Moore’s are no different. Throughout their lives, they are constantly changing and in some places calling the shots. One chose correctly, and one did not.
In life, multiple factors work together to influence the choices one makes, and these choices affect both one’s present and their future. In a narrative about two boys who share the same identity, their two seperate lives are compared to one another by the differences of their futures. Choice versus Fate is a theme in The Other Wes Moore that is developed throughout the plot to display how the two forces work together and against each other in the two characters’ lives, and to also emphasize the reality that at times, one’s fate is already pre-destined and the choices that one makes may not be impactful enough to change their destiny.
Wes Moore Paper Richelle Goodrich once said, “To encourage me is to believe in me, which gives me the power to defeat dragons.” In a world submerged in diversity, racism and prejudice it is hard for minorities to get ahead. The novel “The Other Wes Moore” is a depiction of the differences that encouragement and support can make in the life of a child. This novel is about two men, with the same name, from the same neighborhood, that endured very similar adversities in their lives, but their paths were vastly different. In the following paragraphs, their lives will be compared, and analyzed from a sociological perspective.